China-based Shanghai SVA-NEC Liquid Crystal Display (SVA-NEC) will be the first China panel maker to invest in a seventh-generation (7G)/7.5G TFT LCD plant with the plant expected to come online in 2009 at the soonest, according to research firm Displaybank.SVA-NEC's 6G plant will also enter mass production in 2008.

On October 24, 2006, Fujitsu received a report from a customer in Japan that a Fujitsu notebook with a battery pack subject to a recent replacement program by Sony had an incident in which the battery pack overheated and sparked. After investigating the incident together with Sony, it has been concluded that the incident resulted from the Sony-made battery pack, and Fujitsu is now pursuing further detailed investigations.

Culver City (CA) - Logitech is trying to spice up normally boring speakers with its new Z10 series. The speakers have a touch-sensitive control panel and an LCD panel that can display CPU and RAM usage along with typical song information. You can see the speakers in operation in the following video.

After Samsung, Dell is the second major company that tells its customers that Vista may need more system memory than what Microsoft is listing in its system requirements. According to a report in the Seattle Post Intelligencer (SPI), chief executive officer Kevin Rollins promoted an upgrade to 2 GB.

IBM's Zurich labs have developed a new heatsink and water-cooling that promises to cool chips up to six times better than conventional air cooling. The heatsink contains tiny channels similar to the capillaries you would see in tree leaves and in human circulator systems. The channels allow either water or heatsink compound to spread more uniformly and thereby dissipate more heat.

Adobe has released a public beta of their upcoming Soundbooth audio editing program. You can think of it as Photoshop for your sound and music files. Soundbooth allows users to remove noise, clicks and pops and low-frequency rumble from audio files. It can also add voice-overs and has some rudimentary music production tools.

Microsoft Game Studios, along with developer Epic Games, announced on Wednesday that they have completed the production of the anticipated Xbox 360 game Gears of War. Set to launch nationwide on 12 November, it is Microsoft's big video game entry in the week-long period of highly anticipated mid-November product launches.
Screenshots of Gears of War ...

Chicago (IL) - Microsoft had to deal with the first security issues of Internet Explorer 7.0 on the first day of the browser's release. Firefox appears to be ok as of now, but Italian website Pianeta PC, claims that a security hole that was already patched for 1.x versions of Firefox is resurfacing in 2.0 - and allows malignant programmers to create Javascript code that causes the browser to crash.

Shuttle, the makers of small form factor computers, has announced that its systems are now Energy Star Compliant and use up to 70% less electricity than non-compliant computers. The computers achieve compliance by entering power saving mode when inactive.

Sylmar (CA) - Almost all your electricity comes from a local power plant, usually of a coal, natural gas or nuclear variety, but in the future most of this electricity could come from high-efficiency solar cells. Spectrolab, a Boeing subsidiary, is currently producing cells that are almost 40% efficient and promise even higher efficiencies in the future. Company executives and engineers explained how the solar cells work and even gave us a tour of their Sylmar California factory.

Red Hat released its latest version in the Fedora Project, Fedora Core 6. The software incorporates new features, including new GUI management tools, better and faster updating tools, and accessibility to third-party Red Hat Package Management (RPM) repositories, according to Red Hat.

Sunnyvale (CA) - AMD today announced that it has completed the acquisition of graphics chip developer ATI. The company does not waste any time to make use of the acquired knowledge: In 2007, AMD will be upgrading its mobile platform and offer a Centrino-like platform as well as integrated solutions for commercial and media systems. And there will be a processor with built-in graphics.